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‘Peacock in the Desert’ Review: Courting Opulence in Northwest India

A survey of the Rathores, a Hindu clan of the warrior caste who over the course of 500 years built a life both cosmopolitan and grand.

By

Lee Lawrence

March 10, 2018 7:00 a.m. ET

Houston

In a northwestern corner of the Indian subcontinent, on the edge of the Thar desert, recent arrivals from further north built a fortified palace on a rocky hill in the “land of kings,” today’s Rajasthan. It was 1459, and over the next 500 years the Rathores, a Hindu clan of the warrior caste, built a life both cosmopolitan and...